The world continues to move at ever-increasing speed. Twitter is not going to slow down for you to catch your breath.

Not only is work filling your day, but so are non-profits. Even consumer marketing seems to be vying for your time (“Visit our website.” “Fill out this survey.” “Engage in these conversations.”) instead of directly reaching for your billfold.

We’re all busy. It isn’t going to change anytime soon. If I could visualize this phenomenon, it would look like a monstrous fitness center with people on treadmills. So many treadmills you can’t see the end of it.

What can you do? If we’re all stuffing our lives this way, how do you do anything that gets noticed? How do you define success in a line-up of people all running in the same direction, yet going nowhere?

Margin.

On a sheet of standard notebook paper, there are a few inches of space reserved along the edges where the writer doesn’t write. I remember my elementary teacher guiding us, “Write your name in the margin.” If that space were not preserved for our names, it would have been much more difficult to discern which paper belonged to which student.

It is the same in our lives today. Sure there are going to be meetings to attend, traffic jams, paper jams, invoices to create, bills to pay, meetings to attend, paperwork to fill, inboxes to empty, dinner to make, dishes to clean and meetings to attend (let’s not get carried away). But there must be space reserved along the edges of life. This is where we can leave our unique signature.

What are you doing with your margins? Are you filling them up with other’s “stuff?” Are you letting others into your margins and giving them what should be your space? Or are you writing your name? Your way. Your signature.

Create the space to be uniquely you and claim your masterpiece.